House Republican Concedes SoCal Wildfires Are ‘A Force of Nature’ – But Still Says Disaster Relief Should Be Conditional
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tangled with Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) over whether disaster relief to California should be conditioned on state-level policy implementations.
A series of fires have raged in the Los Angeles area over the past two weeks. At this point, it is uncertain what started the fires, which have spread rapidly thanks to severe drought conditions and high winds. More than 24 people have died and thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Many Republicans have seized on the catastrophe to blame Democratic leaders in the state, including Governor Gavin Newsom, who is viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate.
On Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) became the latest prominent GOP lawmaker to indicate he wants disaster relief to the state contingent on policy changes at the state and local levels.
“Obviously, there has been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems,” the speaker said, even though it is not clear what, if any role, these alleged culprits have played. “And it does come down to leadership. And it appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty and in many respects.”
Hours later on CNN’s The Source, Nunn joined Collins to discuss the fires and a federal response to them.
“Do you agree with Speaker Johnson that conditions should be attached to the new aid to California?” she asked.
Nunn replied by acknowledging the two dozen people who have died so far before pivoting to “the California situation.”
“I’m from a small farm state,” he said. “And when we get decimated by tornadoes, we expect the rest of the country is gonna come to our assistance. I believe firmly in talking with the speaker tonight that this is where we want to be as a nation. I also recognize that there are challenges. We have a California situation where state and local leaders, as was highlighted, have been derelict in their responsibility.”
Nunn went on to explain why he believes aid to California should come with strings attached:
NUNN: [W]e don’t want to continue to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to a situation that finds itself consistently in a challenge to be able to do forest management, water management. I mean, we just heard right now the leadership in L.A. Is looking at making L.A. into a sanctuary city in violation of federal law. But they expect that the federal government’s gonna come and help bail them out when they’re openly flaunting their responsibilities. So, there needs to be a clear conversation on this…
COLLINS: Yeah, but you’re not saying that single-handedly it was the Democratic elected leaders’ responsibility for this fire. I mean, we’ve heard from– we’re gonna speak to the fire chief in Orange County in a minute who said this was unstoppable. I mean–
NUNN: This is a force of nature. Yeah. Caitlin, you’re absolutely right. But I also want to say, yeah, I also want to highlight here, as we heard from our own fire chief here in L.A., there’s a situation right now where they felt like they were chronically underfunded. They didn’t get the training and the resources they needed, and they don’t wanna be political about this, but they felt like they were left in a lurch. I think this is tragic when we have a situation where we’re pulling in 900 conscripted prisoners to help fight a fire in a situation which is truly historically massive in magnitude. But we also have a state which has just fallen flat in its responsibility because this is not the first time this has happened.
Watch above via CNN.
